The present invention relates as indicated to a movable partition wall, and relates more particularly to improvements in the partition assembly disclosed and claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,755,979, granted Sept. 4, 1973, to Spiros G. Pantazi, and entitled "Demountable Partition Assembly".
The partition assembly disclosed in the aforementioned patent meets the general desired objectives of providing a partition which can be quickly and easily assembled and disassembled between the floor and ceiling of a room and which is designed to minimize heat and sound transmission through the partition assembly. A further advantage of the patented design is to permit the wall panels which form part of the partition to be effectively mounted between support members positioned at the floor and ceiling without requiring the use of tools. The panels and support members are constructed and arranged so that each panel when properly aligned with the support members can be simply dropped in place, with no permanent connection or fastening being required to firmly support the wall panels. The same applies to horizontally adjacent wall panels which can be interconnected without the use of tools. The construction thus permits the wall panels to be easily assembled and disassembled when it is desired to reconstruct the partition at a different location in the room or elsewhere as desired.
Although generally satisfactory for the purpose intended, the patented design has certain manufacturing and operational disadvantages. The construction of the partition assembly is principally of wood materials and the dimension tolerances in manufacture of the partition assembly are quite critical, being in certain instances approximately 1/64 of an inch. In addition, the bottom support members for the partition are secured to the floor in spaced relation thereby not providing the desired sound dampening characteristics at the lower region of the partition. The spaced bottom support members also adversely affect the strength and stability of the partition assembly.